5 Things You Didn’t Know About Dennis Hopper
Kansas-born writer, actor and director Dennis Hopper passed away 15 years ago on May 29, 2010, at the age of 74. With a screen career dating back to the mid-1950s, Hopper found fame as director and costar of the counterculture classic motorcycle movie Easy Rider in 1969, earning a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination. Known for playing unconventional, excitable and unhinged characters, Hopper had memorable roles in such classic films as Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983), Blue Velvet (1986), Hoosiers (1986), True Romance (1993) and Speed (1994). One of the most prolific actors of the last 50 years, Hopper rarely turned down work. His last major starring role was in the Starz original drama series Crash (2008-09).
But there was a lot more to Hopper than his TV and film career.
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1 He was a talented artist, photographer and art collector
Hopper’s fascination with art began as a child, when he took painting lessons at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. This developed into an art career that bloomed in tandem with his Hollywood career; Hopper had his photographs and paintings displayed in art museums both in the United States and overseas. He was also known as a significant collector of modern art, even being the first buyer of one of Andy Warhol‘s Campbell’s Soup can paintings before they gained widespread recognition.
2 James Dean was a close friend
Everett Collection
He became friends with James Dean while working on the films Rebel Without a Cause and Giant and was deeply affected by the young actor’s death in an automobile accident in 1955. Dean was also the person who convinced Hopper to learn about photography.
3 He and his son survived a horrific car accident
In 1999, he and his young son, Henry, were in a head-on car crash in Jamaica. Both remarkably emerged without a scratch, though Hopper’s friends who were also in the car were badly injured.
4 He was a Republican
Though he was once a supporter of fairly radical left-wing politics in the 1960s and ’70s, Hopper admitted to being a Republican in the 1980s with the election of Ronald Reagan, and was a supporter of both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
5 His final role involved an in-depth conversation with his exposed manhood
Gregory E. Peters/Starz! Entertainment/Courtesy: Everett Collection
Inspired by the Academy Award-winning film of the same name, Starz made its first foray into original dramas in 2008 with the series Crash, which followed a group of Los Angeles denizens who navigate social and racial tensions. The ensemble cast is led by an unhinged Hopper as a self-destructive record producer, whose first scene involves him having an in-depth conversation with his exposed manhood.
Hopper said, “My character has really a duality. He seems to have a tremendous empathy and understanding of things, and at the same time, he has no limitations [in] how he addresses other people or other races or other genders. … He’s totally a loose cannon.”
Remind 
Classic Hollywood Hunks
September 2019
Cary Grant, Sean Connery, Rock Hudson and Paul Newman, smoldered onscreen and, in addition to being smokin’ hot, they were effortlessly cool.
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